The Devil's Cinema

I
N A CITY OF
oilmen, an aspiring filmmaker imagined he could be something better than working class, more fantastic, grand even – take a chance at Hollywood fame. Hardened financial investors were already opening padded wallets to support the young man's outlandish concepts. Friends adored him, viewed him as a ticket to riches. And actors were flying into the prairie capital of Edmonton, Canada, for their chance to work with him.

The man they trusted, however, had been guarding an appalling secret. One of his strange new plans would soon consume him, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, sending studio executives into hiding at the horror they were accused of inspiring: a murder in the most incomprehensible, post-modern way.

In the following pages I tell a story of love, death, and the World Wide Web. It is a book of determined friendship and determined madness, of veteran detectives left to question long-held understandings of their usual suspects.

But no matter how unlikely these events may appear, this remains a work of non-fiction. In fact, this true-crime narrative has been drawn from years of journalistic research.

Anything in quotation marks is taken from a written document, court testimony, or interview. Detectives and witnesses shared their experiences over hundreds of hours. Last of all, the killer himself granted unparalleled access into his life, revealing the foundations for his startling ideas through extensive interviews and more than three hundred pages of personal writings. But even then, parts of this story rely heavily on sworn evidence presented in court. It was a trial I witnessed first-hand, a month-long criminal proceeding that finally revealed the unimaginable details of what had really transpired within the darkest of minds.

S
TEVE
L
ILLEBUEN

W
ELCOME TO
D
EADMONTON:

Standing atop the rolling prairies of western Canada, the city is the last major stop heading north before the uninhabited, the unfamiliar, the unknown. Its real name is Edmonton, but nobody calls it that. Within the sprawling city streets, the civic slur surfaces and flows from home to home, mouth to ear, like a morbid whisper. And no one really knows how it all started.

Historians joke that the epithet likely began more than one hundred years ago, when European fur traders built the first fort above the steep banks of the North Saskatchewan River. Whether explorer or modern tourist, there's never been much of a reason to visit the place since. Even elected officials have accepted this region's lacklustre image with their own brand of dark humour. “Edmonton is not the end of the world – it's just easier to see it from there,” once quipped Ralph Klein, a colourful and well-known politician. Many have adopted a similar self-deprecating attitude, wielding such an ethos like an invaluable tool while residing in the northernmost major city of North America.

Edmonton has a certain charm despite its remoteness – an atmosphere of progressive conservative values that is neither pretentious nor condescending. As the capital of the western, landlocked province of Alberta, Edmonton has plenty of government jobs available, offering benefits, nine-to-five working hours, and weekends off. But the non-stop buzz of big-city living certainly lies elsewhere. The downtown core still shuts down on the weekends, and most stores close when the office drones head home. The rat race runs in a lower gear in Edmonton, which is polite and kind, like a country town but nearing a million residents. Everybody seems to know everybody.

Snowy winters this far north can blanket half the year. Indoor activities tend to thrive in these cases, whether citizens huddle under the comfort
of shopping malls, restaurants, or movie theatres. It is no surprise then that the city is home to one of the world's largest shopping centres. West Edmonton Mall often overflows with frantic shoppers, scurrying its vast corridors and eight hundred stores like ants in a colony disturbed by the curious prodding of a destructive child.

In contrast to the bleakness of winter, the remaining seasons can be quite glorious. Festivals emerge from the spring thaw. Long summer evenings transform the river valley into a lush forest. Historical inner-city neighbourhoods that date back to the Klondike Gold Rush are crammed with people, each pub dusting off its patio for a round of cold Canadian beers. But when autumn returns, everyone heads back indoors to hibernate. The hockey season entertains. Town pride has been hinged on the long-past success of the Edmonton Oilers, once an NHL sporting dynasty and home to the greatest player of all time, Wayne Gretzky. Edmonton began calling itself the “City of Champions.”

There's plenty of cash to go around – almost too much at times. For when oil booms, the town explodes. In 1947, drillers struck oil at Leduc Number One, sparking the region's first black gold rush. As oil prices boomed again in the 2000s, an oil sands deposit with more recoverable oil than Saudi Arabia became feasible for extraction on a massive scale. Such potential attracted thousands of young men craving a quick job, a fast buck, and a dirty weekend. The city's nickname therefore took on deeper meanings through the years as successive oil booms fuelled immigration, untold wealth, and surges in violent crime.

This landscape and culture can appear strange to outsiders. The city is often misunderstood and criticized. It is a community on the edge, a “boiler room” to the
New York Times
, and a “visually unappealing corner of Canada” to London's
Daily Telegraph
. The city has fought back against such insults, but a prolonged defence has had little impact. No matter what the city does, no matter what its people say, no matter how things may change here for the better through the years, Edmonton has always been treated as a dull, boring place to ever call home.